James from Pennsylvania: Prolouge

She imagined a better world. The flutters of enthusiasm and devastation of anguish had forever intertwined as she sang her final goodbyes. Stuck somewhere in between the second and first floor, her echoes came from a distance place. He could hear her, haunting him day after day, the same sequence of notes floating like airborne illness through the ducts of the building. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take, the song ran like a soundtrack to the countless hours of data entry placed into his software system. If it wasn’t her hymns, they were replaced by the laughing or crying of children throughout the school. When it was silent the songs turned to whispers and then the whispers to words.

He had a horrible nightmare the final night, he dreamt he could see her across the room peaking out from behind the soda machine. Her face was as white as the ghost he assumed she was, her eyes stained with black and her face ran streams of off color red tears that paved brick roads down to her chin. She was dead, and he felt death until he awoke. When awoken, he gasped for live air, for breath, for life. He dreaded coming to work and couldn’t possibly afford to miss anymore days. The pressure began in his teeth, brushing furiously while staring into the mirror. “Maybe it will leave if I quit the job, move to a different building”. That had been his rationale for other similar incidents. Different sightings, separate dreams and condensed experiences. He kept listening and his hands began to shake.

She appeared for real this day, and all the horror and beauty that seemed to epitomize her songs, came to full light. She finally caught his eyes and the filter for her horrid memories came to pass, and were now ingrained inside James’s head. He could see and feel her pain and the one’s responsible for it. In between the second and first floor there was room. Not far from his cubical. His office. His ears. Thinking through her thoughts, he hated the people who failed to listen and ignore, and if he chose ignorance, he would choose death in the most frightening of fashions. He wasn't sure how he knew this...but he was far from wrong. He could have ignored. Instead he walked to the office and let them know he was leaving for the day.

He drove for hours, the recycled hum circling over and over through his eardrums. The bad dream for him was the harshest of realities for her, and for one reason or another, he had been chosen to listen and to discover. There is no sense, there is no personal connection, there is only the most baring of tales spoken through an agent of the death, to a human of the living. Death is coming for all of us, but in the meantime, you have the ability to help. Suddenly, the humming began to talk to him. He thought to himself..."If you do not you will die. It is in part a gift but most certainly a curse and the people responsible…must pay". He drove over to the side of the road, exited his vehicle and threw up. In the puddle of his own sick he could see her face, not smiling, not frowning, not crying—simply staring. He wiped his mouth and stared toward the sun. The warmth hit his face and he closed his eyes and disappeared into thought. What comes next? He would not go back to the building for the perpetrators lived elsewhere. The singing and humming would not stop until he found them. His journey begins.